


rainbow unicorn space kitten

by CheapNightmares



Series: Quiet Country [1]
Category: Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, Other, Platonic Life Partners, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, There is graphic violence, also some swearing, and charley's terrible underwear choices, it's been ten thousand years since I've posted anything here, mature tag due to aforementioned violence, not really characters? but they die, oc by me on rotttnapple, original creeper interpretation by pohocounty on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 04:55:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20522276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapNightmares/pseuds/CheapNightmares
Summary: Creeper Hunters think they've finally got old man Creeper in the bag on an old Florida farm. But he's not alone anymore, and the boys are about to give them a run for their money.





	rainbow unicorn space kitten

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1 of the Quiet Country Series.

In his dreams the truck engines had been thunder from the storm. Maybe because it was all mixing together – boom, crash, lightning turning night into day and back again, the rain pounding and slashing against the windows, driven by hard gusts of wind. Charley was sleeping good, sleeping _great_ really, for the first time in a while. The goats were secured in the barn and there was no sick youngsters to feed and hold, the crows only wanted to sleep. Dulu near them, a comfort to them, hanging upside down and wrapped up in those great big wings, snoring away. There was a baby monitor on his bedside table, a video camera that switched lazily through the nurseries, volume cranked up high (he'd been awoken in the middle of the night to puppies and kittens, once sick and frail now rambunctious and full of life deciding three in the morning was the perfect time to play, he never minded it). Now the feed didn't switch, just trained on the crow cages where the injured birds rested, Dulu's rough, grunty, snores like a lullaby to all of them. It was the crows that woke him first.

Harsh, frightened, coupled with clashing and clanging, thrown toys and beaks smashed against bars (he always felt guilty, caging them, even if it was a just a temporary measure). Charley was awake in an instant, the sleepiness gone. Shoots a glance to the monitor – there's no sound of Dulu's diesel-idle rumbling, but he's not there, either. Even if he had been down in the basement Dulu would have been there in an instant for his beloved birds, there to hold them and soothe them. There's no Dulu and they're terrified. Something's wrong. _Something's wrong._  
He's out of bed and kneeling on the floor, dragging the black plastic case from behind the dresser and popping the latches when he hears the scream full of anger and pain. There's no equivalent in human kind, no animal or man or man-made thing could make a sound like that. Charley looks up as the lightning flashes again, framing Dulu against the sky boiling with black clouds, his wings pushing him higher, a thick cable seeming to grow from his chest, taunt as he pulls against some unseen thing. He's read enough about the bastards to know. He doesn't need to see it to know. The shotgun inside the case is loaded, twelve shells of double-aught twelve gauge buckshot all lined up in the tube that ran the length of the long barrel, plus one in the chamber. Charley had it long before he found Dulu all tangled up in that hellish net, bought for the express purpose of keeping those _good ol' country boys_ away, the kind that thought it was funny when people like him got their faces rearranged while pleading for their lives. He had waded through all the bullshit to find out how to use it without blowing his own foot off, but he never actually used it, not liking the sound of guns, too loud and too horrible.

He's going to use it now, by fucking god he's going to use it now. There's human shouts, faint over the noise of the storm and Dulu _screams_ again. It sets Charley's teeth on edge, breaking his heart and filling him full of hatred and rage – not for Dulu, _never_ for Dulu, but for the bastards hurting him. The ones that think it's all right to come onto _their_ land, disturb _their_ peace, upset _their_ sweet pets (he's headed towards the back door, cat eyes staring at him from dark little places), hurt _his_ Dulu. Dulu, who's shown him nothing but kindness. Dulu, who's always been there to keep the monsters away, who's never mocked him for his fears. Charley's just not going to allow these trespassing bastards leave, not a single hateful one. He bursts out the back door – _like a bat outta hell_ – and is almost immediately tossed off the back porch by the wind, bare feet sliding on the rain-slicked wood as he reaches out and braces himself against one of the posts, fighting mother nature with the shotgun gripped in his other hand. Charley gets down the steps without breaking his neck, barely, barefoot with his toes digging into the soft earth as he marches across the yard towards the lights, the shouting. A real imagine of protection, he was, wearing nothing but rainbow unicorn space kitten shorts, already soaked dark with cold rain.

Lightning cracks again and just barely saves him from tripping over a corpse out here on the grass, one arm gone and it's head split open like a rotten melon. He doesn't even stop to look at it, he doesn't care, there could be a thousand corpses on the lawn and he'd climb over all of them to stop the living from hurting the winged man up there in the sky – _ohshitwhatifhesstruckbylightning._ The truck lights – floodlights, spotlights, all kinds of lights, too many fucking lights when he and Dulu should've been sleeping – are some help in that they throw those bellowing, stupid creatures into sharp relief. Charley gets just a little closer, splattered in mud up to his knees, soaked to the bone, lifting the shotgun up to his shoulder and seating it firmly there, digging his feet into the mud to brace himself as he cocks his head to sight down the line of that long, long barrel. Just like he read how to do it, sets his finger on the trigger and shoots. The mud is slippery as shit and the recoil knocks him right on his ass, ears ringing, a sharp and offended pain in his shoulder. The excited shouts were now overlapped with agonized screaming, someone's legs just got a whole lot of buckshot in them as another voice raises above the others demanding order 'cause they were gonna kill it, gonna end this tonight. Like _fuck_ they were.

Charley rises from the ground like a corpse from the grave, digging the butt of the gun into the ground, clawing, fighting every last bit of the storm and the mud that threatens to throw him down again. He gets up just enough to rack the gun, blowing some other shitfucker away, the wind was probably throwing half the accuracy right to hell but it was still enough to make it a face full. He's growling, deep and dark and animalistic in his throat but he doesn't notice, no more than he notices the pain in his shoulder. They don't notice him, either, the fall of their so-called friends probably blamed on Dulu, they always blamed everything on Dulu, never took half a fucking second to even try to know him. Maybe it was better, they didn't _deserve_ to know him. He sees Dulu – just a glimpse, moving fast and low, avoiding another shot harpoon to snatch a hunter off the back of his truck like a pear off a tree, disappearing against the black clouds. Charley grins with vicious victory, slithering along: hands and feet and shotgun, mud washing off fast as it's packing on his skin. Someone nearly trips over him and gets a belly full of lead for it, tumbling off into the dark. The clearest details are Dulu, when they hurt him, when they tear him up with bullets and flying bolts shot from pneumatic guns attached to long wire cables. Charley doesn't notice the spray of blood in his face, the kick of the gun, how his body is aching from unseen rocks or the sting of hot casings that once landed on him in a shower (took care of that problem real fast, rack and shoot, the thunder overlapping the sound).

Charley doesn't notice when the storm lulls, calms, shotgun empty but that didn't matter at all. He'd come across some country fried fucker laying in the ruin of their yard, alive but dazed after getting tossed out of one of the trucks. Charley climbed up on man (_howdarehecomeherehowdarehethinkhecandothis_) like a feral animal, reversed the gun, grabbed the hot barrel in both hands and stabbed it through his throat. Charley's turned the gun back around and is mashing the bastard's face into a pulp with the butt of it, words gone into an unintelligible scream of rage that goes on and on; only stopping when Dulu comes and (gently) tugs the gun out of his hands, tosses that aside, gathering him up against his hot skin to limp back to the house. Charley curls up tight against the big old boy's chest, mud-wrecked, bruised and bleeding from a dozen scrapes and superficial cuts, shivering from cold and a protective fury. He wants to tell Dulu that he was worried for him, scared, that the birds are scared out of their minds too, the cats are hiding, the house is in chaos and he was so worried he was going to lose him _forever_, that he shouldn't be carrying him because he can walk and Dulu's injured and damnit those wounds are going to get infected somehow. Instead he's pressed against Dulu's naked chest, breathing too hard, heart pounding, eyeballing every body they pass, ready to lunge out of those big arms and suffocate any bastard that dare twitch right there in the mud. Charley almost does it, too, before one of those big wings come around and block his view, holding in the warmth that the rain had sapped from his skin.

By the time they reach the house again Charley's sleeping, his body shutting down to recover from the sudden influx of primal instinct, soothed by Dulu's deep breaths, the odd crackle and pop of his body repairing itself all over again. The cats begin to appear from their hiding spaces, tails twitching inquisitively, a few meowing their soft questions, the crows settled, offended but calm. Outside the clouds begin to tatter and pull apart, allowing the sun to begin it's slow and ponderous rise over the earth, heedless of the slaughter below, or the stupidity of the men who caused it.

**Author's Note:**

> This particular series begins at some point in modern times (2000s) but no specific date has been set.


End file.
